COOPERSTOWN, N.Y - Rickey Henderson, putting his personality on full display in front of curious new peers Sunday, displayed a different side during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Humility.
Henderson, Jim Rice and veterans selection Joe Gordon became the latest inductees into the Hall. Henderson and Rice were the first left fielders inducted into the Hall since Carl Yastrzemski in 1989.
“My journey as a player is complete,” said Henderson, who never referred to himself in his famous third person during a 14-minute speech. “I am now in the class of the greatest players of all time. At this moment, I am very, very humbled.”
Dave Stewart, Henderson’s best friend and former teammate with the Oakland Athletics, raised his right fist in triumph at the end of Henderson’s speech. Stewart always felt bad for the way Henderson was ridiculed when he said, “Today, I am the greatest,” after breaking Lou Brock’s career stolen base record in 1991.
Stewart said Henderson was trying to emulate their hero, Muhammad Ali.
“My proudest moment in the game was (listening to him) today,” said Stewart, a four-time 20-game winner. “I was proud to tears. He was entertaining. He was funny. He was outstanding.”
Henderson said he was grateful he listened to his mother, Bobbie, and gave up football in favor of baseball.
“My dream was to play football for the Oakland Raiders,” Henderson said. “But my mother thought I would get hurt playing football, so she chose baseball for me. I guess moms do know best.”
Henderson also said his high school counselor, Tommie Wilkerson, persuaded him to play baseball simply by bribing him.
“She would pay me a quarter every time I would get a hit, when I would score or stole a base,” Henderson said. “After my first 10 games, I had 30 hits, 25 runs scored and 33 steals (worth $22 total). Not bad money for a kid in high school.”
Rice also chose baseball, rejecting a football scholarship to Nebraska.
Rice, who had to wait until his final year of eligibility to be elected, said it no longer makes any difference that it took 15 years.
“You marvel at how sanity endures,” said Rice, a 16-year veteran with the Boston Red Sox. “After 15 years, you get a phone call you never thought you’d get. What matters is that I got in.”
Dwight Evans, Rice’s teammate for 16 years, said the induction was long overdue.
“Everybody says the short porch (at Fenway Park) helped him,” said Evans. “It was 37 feet high. He’d hit line drives that would be out of any ballpark in baseball, but not there. It was really a left-handed hitters’ ballpark.”
Henderson, when asked the favorite story about himself, didn’t hesitate. It was the time he put his original $1 million signing bonus check on the wall of his home, not cashing it until a year later.
“I put it on the wall so each and every day when I passed by that wall, I reminded myself that I was a millionaire,” Henderson says. “I had it up for a year until the Oakland A’s told me they were trying to do their books and they were coming up short $1 million. They wondered where it was.”